The new sister web page of Frontpage Magazine, DiscoverTheNetwork, seems to be upsetting some of our leftist brethren.The first outburst of crazed frenzy has come from Kurt Nimmo, one of the regular columnists at Counterpunch web magazine.In the first lengthy analysis ofDiscoverTheNetwork, Nimmo writes a vicious attack against the new venture, in which he accuses the operators of unjustified inclusion, in a comprehensive database of the left, of Islamic terrorists and their apologists (along with, of course, leftists innocent of such connections). He writes:

"Truly, Horowitz's latest endeavor is a sight to behold -- an exercise in massive right-wing paranoia and vindictiveness, making the so-called left, from Ted Kennedy to the bedtime bogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (if Abu's a leftist, then I'm Donald Trump), into something it is not: a massive, secret, treasonous, hateful, and violent (as in Ayman al-Zawahiri) conspiracy to destroy David Horowitz's version of America."

Who exactly is Kurt Nimmo?I have not done an exact count of his articles, but it looks to me like Cockburn runs Nimmo every few days in Counterpunch.Nimmo's credentials for analyzing global political events for Cockburn's webzine? Well, rather than Stanford or Harvard, his intellectual base seems to be a New Mexico Walmart. To be fair, he does seem to havesome connection with New Mexico State University, but as a local photographer who occasionally does snapshots for the campus newsletter.His day job, on the other hand, is at the photo developmentdeskat Walmart.

In his off hours, Nimmo runs his own weblog, which features screeds even more anti-American and anti-Semitic than the famous 9/11 rant by Ward Churchill. "Bush and Rumsfeld are promoting Zionist racism," insists Nimmo. He also claims the US and Israel killed Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. (Apparently they got a Palestinian dupe to plant the bomb.)

Nimmo is of course a devoted fan of Churchill.In Counterpunch he wrote: "I must say that I agree with Churchill: the financial and government institutions housed in the WTC, including the CIA, most certainly did employ 'technocrats' comparable to Adolf Eichmann." He has written his own rants in Counterpunch endorsing North Korea's defiance of Bush: "No matter how you cut it, Dubya has painted himself into a corner. He may yet go on record as the most ill-advised and murderous US president."

Like Michael Moore, Nimmo considers the terrorist threat to be an imperialist myth: "Bush's fraudulent terror alerts endeavor to convince America that 'sufficient threat' exists to such a perilous degree from a largely mythical al-Qaeda, but a wholesale decimation of the Bill of Rights is also in order." But if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is not really a terrorist, why be outraged that he should appear in the same database with Ted Kennedy?The Left can be so darned confusing!

More to the point, why be outraged when he himself lumps liberals like Kennedy with Adolph Hitler: "Democrats out there: come November, when you vote for Kerry, you will be voting for mass murder and flagrant violation of international law. Like the Good Germans of Nazi Germany, you will be guilty of supporting crimes against humanity."

Here's a sampling of Nimmospeak from Cap'n Nimmo:

"The attacks of 9/11 were not actually the work of Muslim terrorists. If you believe that you have bought a canard made up by Islamophobic Israelis:

"I will not go into the numerous inconsistencies in the government case against al-Qaeda, or their failure to answer crucial questions, and will leave it up to you to read the voluminous information out there, presented mostly by the 9/11 truth movement, demonstrating the fact this remains an unsolved crime and the perps are at large.... As we know, the WTC 'story' was disseminated by the Bush regime in the hours following the attacks and was uncritically, in fact slavishly broadcast by the corporate media, the same media that later sold the Iraqi invasion to the American people with nearly as much ease. No evidential detail was provided... In a matter of hours, blame was affixed to an evil Muslim madman and his organization. In short, a camarilla of right-wingers, attached at the hip to a gang of Muslim-hating right-wingers in Israel, contrived a story that served their best interests."

"For Bush, Ashcroft, the Zionist neocons, and the rapture-dizzy Christian Zionists, Abu Hamza al-Masri is the perfect Islamic fanatic. In the weeks ahead, as he is extradited from Britain to face the death penalty in America, the cleric will be held up as a primary example of the inherent viciousness and homicidal character of al-Qaeda and radical Muslims in general who want nothing more than to force us at the point of an AK47 to face Mecca five times a day."

The Bush and Bin Laden "crime families" are protected by the ruling class media:"Naturally, the US corporate media will embrace this story and chances are the Bushites will use it to justify their invasion of Iraq. Yet the same media refuses to publish anything detailing the business links between the Bush and bin Laden crime families."

"Of course, as a neocon acolyte, Condi Rice is not interested in peace in the Middle East, least of all between the Palestinians and Israelis, and even less so then her predecessor, who was often at odds with the Bushcon "crazies," as he so famously called them. Rice's Hoover Institution is closely aligned with other neocon foundations, including the Project for a New American Century and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the latter particularly rabid in its opposition to any meaningful resolution of the conflict--that is to say, Israel's theft and occupation of Palestinian land--and continually cranks out propaganda designed to demonize not only the Palestinians, but Arabs and Muslims in general.

"Increasingly, Iraqis involved in the resistance are targeting 'civilians,' who are in fact working for military contractors and organized theft operations such as the World Bank... According to a CNBC business snapshot, Logcap III's purpose is to 'deliver Combat Support and Combat Service Support (CS/CSS)' to the US Army. In other words, this anonymous employee was providing support to the occupation forces and was undoubtedly regarded as a legitimate military target by Iraqi guerilla forces."

The blind sheik Abdel-Rahman who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing was a CIA plant:

"Here's the message sent, via the corporate media: there are terrorists and radical, 'anti-American' traitors in our midst.Considering the history lesson below, the New York Post should have written: Lynne Stewart convicted of passing messages to the CIA...So important was Abdel-Rahman, the CIA made sure he was issued a visa and entered the United States in 1990, the country he supposedly hated. Abdel-Rahman went on to head the al-Salaam Mosque in Jersey City....As for the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the FBI knew about the plot and allowed it to happen."

"Having said that, it is my opinion the U.S. was not attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001 -- or not Muslim terrorists, anyway."

"'It could've been (Osama) bin Laden,' Charkaoui added. 'But maybe it was done by ultra-conservatives in the United States for economic gain.'Let's take a look at the ballistics on this statement.As we know, in the days and hours before the attacks, there were conspicuous spikes in trading activity in regard to the two airlines involved in the hijackings of Sept. 11. 'There was a 9,000 percent jump in United Air Lines (UAL) put options between Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, with a huge spike 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack,' writes Christopher Bollyn. 'American Airlines saw a 6,000 percent jump in put options [also known as short-selling] above normal the day before the attacks. However, there was no similar trading activity on any other airlines, according to market reports.' Coincidence?...Adil Charkaoui is correct when he claims 'some guy living in a cave doesn't have the means to plan an attack against the most powerful nation in the world.'"(He then concludes that the Israeli Mossad did it.)

Nope, no fruitcakes in the Counterpunch cupboard.

Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press. A collection of his commentaries on the current events in Israel can be found on his "blog" at www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

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